Press

“You have to make time to make music. When you are a chef, you have to sometimes restrict and experiment with things. You may not necessarily hit the right spot every time but the fun is in trying new recipes and challenging the audience. I have been trying to do exactly that. For me, this is going to be a challenge because it is going to be a new fabric of sound that is going to be presented to people.”

Rajagopalan mentions that the urge to create was not born out of a notion “to be cool”. “I get that a lot. People keep telling me how the sound is really cool and all. But for me it wasn’t born out of such a need. Instead, it was about experimenting with a new style. It provides a lot of possibilities to merge music and technology. While on one hand we have traditional sounds, on the other, we also have the modern music styles and electronica. The scope of this music is wide. Traditional artistes can create new styles and genres along with other forms of music,” he says.

Rajagopalan’s music, on the other hand, manages to sound both global and indigenous at the same time, a curious blend of the familiar and the exotic…The track features a mournful violin melody, set over a pulsating, ominous bassline and the steady beat of the mridangam and the kanjira….Over five minutes long, the song builds up tension and energy as it goes along, before ending on a dreamy, funereal note. A great track that makes you hope that these collaborators have an album in the works.

A 40 minute set with Swaroop Khan and Rajagopalan’s quartet made up of Lindsay D’Mello on drums, Sonu Sangameswaran on bass and Paras Nath on flute was followed by a jarring audience screaming for an encore. The back and forth between Rajagopalan and Nath kept the crowd hooked and D’Mello’s drum solo is worth a mention. Sangameswaran continues to add that vital tone to the track while hugging the shadows and Khan is a breath of fresh air without any qualms between him and his song.

At the age of nine he befriended various musical instruments, at 17 he performed at the Jazz International festival in Thailand; now at 32, musician Vivek Rajagopalan is one of the few Indians to perform at the Bhutan Literary Festival, which begins on May 20.